


Good Company

by viktorstardust



Category: LISA (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Animal Death, Basically traumatizing Terry for a long time, Bittersweet Ending, Child Neglect, Depression, Heavy Angst, Hurt with very little comfort, M/M, Mutant Brad, Terry whump to be specific, Unrequited Love, Whump, it’s implied
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-10 12:36:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20528144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viktorstardust/pseuds/viktorstardust
Summary: The man he loves is chained up in the yard.It doesn’t hurt like it used to.—In which Terry finds mutant Brad before he can get to Buddy and nothing good happens, as usual.





	Good Company

He finds him, slowly dragging himself across the wasteland.

He can’t mistake him for anyone else. Though he looks hauntingly similar to the lumbering monsters they’ve been fighting up until now, and his body is bloody and beaten and all in all horrific really, it’s still him. It’s still his Brad.

The others don’t want to go near him. Birdie confuses him for just another mutant, Shocklord seems overwhelmed by all this, and just wants to leave. But they can’t just leave.

Terry manages a weak, hopeful smile, though in his heart there’s only dread. The dread he felt when he woke up and Brad wasn’t with them. “It’s still Brad, guys,” he manages, giving a good-natured, but unconvincing pet to his friend’s shiny, bald head. “You can see his face, the beard, it’s him!”

Birdie, sober for once, though Terry’s sure he doesn’t want to be, shakes his head. “He ain’t right, Terry.”

Terry won’t listen to this. They can’t quit on him. “Please. He’s just...different, okay?” He sounds like a child trying to convince his parents to let him keep a stray animal. Brad’s still trying to crawl away, but he can’t get far like this.

“I don’t want to see him like this. We’re strong enough to-“

“Don’t.” They can’t. Not after all he’s done for them.

They seem caught off guard by the seriousness in Terry’s eyes and in his words, as if they didn’t expect him to be serious about this.

Quitters, the both of them. Darn quitters.

Brad moans. This is all too real.

“Lisa...”

Terry stiffens, at Brad’s desperate sounds and at the way Birdie and Shocklord stare him down. If they’re gonna fight him or Brad, either him or them will die. Because he won’t move.

“I don’t think y’ remember all the times these monsters tried to kill us.”

“He’s not like that.”

“You’re acting crazy.”

“He would never leave you behind if you w-“

“He _did_ leave us behind!”

He can come up for a million explanations for why Brad left them on the shore. None of them paint Brad in a bad light.

Terry keeps moving with Brad, and so do the others to try and fail to convince him. Stepping around the mangled body of their friend like some kind of horrible, twisted waltz.

The rest happens fast.

Shocklord gets in Brad’s way during their argument. He can’t tell the difference between any other animal blocking his slow, dragging path in the dirt.

Brad’s teeth sink into his leg.

They’re finished with this. With him and Brad.

So him and Brad it’ll be.

Who needs them anyway?

* * *

He’s managed to corral him into the backyard of a house, with a fence that Brad can’t push through. At this point, Terry doesn’t think he knows which direction he was going in when they found him like this. So he doesn’t go anywhere.

The house is utterly deserted, looted inside and out.

It’s his nature to be optimistic. He stands on the porch before his friend. His best friend, who is his best friend no matter what he looks like.

“I think we can make this work, dude!”

Brad blinks one, glassy eye at him. He’ll take it as a ’We sure can, Terry.’

Just because things change doesn’t mean they have to be bad.

Things can only be good when they’re together, anyway.

* * *

Nothing in the house works, as expected. Sometimes it gets too cold at night, so he packs everything up and goes outside in the yard to start a fire.

Just like old times. He smiles to himself when Brad worms his way onto his stomach to watch Terry start a fire. He recoils away from it once Terry gets one going - the mutants they fought never seemed to care much for fire - but Terry pets him like a scared animal and whispers comforting words until the fire is big enough to keep him warm and Brad isn’t scared.

Brad taught him how to start fires on the first night they spent together. Now he can do it like a pro.

He lies himself down across from Brad who is still tentatively eyeing the flames. This isn’t too different from how it used to be. Brad never said much to begin with.

Terry knows the answer somehow, but still wants to ask. “Can you understand me?”

He’s praying for another blink, maybe a moan, something that shows that Brad’s still there, or at least makes him believe he is.

Nothing. Just those dark, dead eyes staring at the fire.

He sighs. “It’s okay. As long as you’re here.” It’s times like these he wants to grab Brad’s hand, hold it tight. They’d done it before. As cool and brave as Terry seemed, even he got scared. His hand in Brad’s was a quick cure-all, a safety net when things got ugly. Brad never said anything when they held hands. Didn’t really say much at all, really. But that was never a problem.

Now there was nothing to hold.

“What were we?” He asks nobody. If Brad could understand him, he wouldn’t ask him this. It’s...too much. Brad didn’t need this on his mind. Now that there’s literally nothing on his mind, he might as well. “I mean, I felt something. And to my credit, I’m usually right about most things.”

He chuckles softly. Boosting himself up like that doesn’t seem to work anymore. Not when Brad has made him forget about being the amazing and unstoppable lord of hints. With Brad, he just wants to be Terry. Even if Terry has never been enough.

“I wish we were born in a different time, man...” Tearful and still just talking to a mindless lump of flesh and pain, his voice drops to a whisper. “All I ever wanted was to know you.”

“Lisa...”

He hasn’t heard Brad speak a real word since he found him again. It’s still just that name. He feels hurt that it’s not his. “Um...Yeah.” He chokes out, tears rolling down his cheeks and into the dirt. “Tomorrow I’ll go find some supplies. I kept our mags...” He stares into Brad’s lifeless eyes and has a question. “Do you need to eat, still?”

No answer. Duh.

“I’ll...I’ll get you something.” He pets what he thinks is where brad’s shoulder used to be in an effort to be reassuring. Brad doesn’t lunge to bite his hand or anything. So that’s good.

“It’s you and me til the end, man.”

Brad is all he needs.

* * *

The answer on what to feed Brad comes in a horrible, horrible way.

He’s sitting with Brad outside on a rather nice day. The clouds cover the sun so it doesn’t beat down on them, but is still too warm to be in the house. So they sit together, in some kind of cheap mockery of old times. It wasn’t even that long ago. Brad, holding him close in a cold tent. No words shared, just the heat of their bodies. Men get cold, men need warmth, that’s the only explanation that’s needed. It’s basic survival, but Terry always found himself wishing it didn’t have to be explained. That two men held each other at night and there’s no logical reason. Did Brad feel the same way even once?

There will never be an answer to his question, so he should just quit thinking about it.

Brad likes the flowers, or that’s what Terry thinks when he sees him crawl over to the few daisiesgrowing somehow in patches surrounded by dusty, infertile dirt.

Terry walks over to him and kneels. “Hey, that one’s getting big!” It’s the biggest one growing there. Beauty in the wasteland. He knows the flowers as if this were his own home. His own flowers. Their garden. “Is it your favorite?” He hates speaking to Brad like he’s a child, or an animal. Terry’s always hated when their enemies would look at him like he’s nothing, like Brad and the others were the threats and he’s just. Nothing. If there’s even a chance Brad can still feel that way, he doesn’t want him to.

They sit and admire the flowers for a bit. The fact that something so beautiful and delicate as a flower can still grow in such a world will never cease to amaze him.

“Maybe we could...I dunno, fix the place up.” He suggests, Brad rumbling somewhere deep in what his throat used to be in response. “I bet there’s people around that still care about lawns and stuff, right? I could really fix the Terr-ain...”

“...Okay, that one wasn’t very good, but usually I have time to think about those.” And he’s smiling. It’s a rotten situation they’re in, but just being with Brad makes him happy. He thinks so, at least.

Listen to him, talking like they’re a new couple trying to fix up a cheap lawn job for a cheap house.

He sighs, leaning on Brad as they both stare absently at the ground. In a way, they’re closer than they’ve ever been. It’s nice.

What follows all happens in a rush.

Through a gap in the bottom of the fence, a small figure twists its way into the backyard. Terry only sees it out of the corner of his eye, and by the time he can turn to face it, it’s already in the yard. His heart sinks.

It’s a dog.

He can’t even make it onto his feet, he’s scooting backwards in the dirt as fast as he can manage, his breaths short and quivering to match his bottom lip.

It sniffs around the dirt, all mangey and with open wounds all over. A part of him feels sad for it, but mostly he just wants it to leave. Never come back. Maybe it’s looking for someone to nurse it back to health, but it sure as hell won’t be him.

There’s no one to save him now.

The dog, drooling and dirty and disgusting, notices Terry once it realizes there’s no food in the yard. Its black eyes fixating on the closest thing to prey it can find.

“Please...” his voice is soft and pleading. Things were so good just a second ago. “Please leave...”

God help him. It snarls and creeps towards him, eyes just as dead as Brad’s.

The thing creeps towards him at a snail’s pace, like it’s waiting for Terry to do something stupid like run. Jokes on it. Terry can’t run. The house is too far away, he wouldn’t make it. Rabies seems like a horrible way to die. Definitely not befitting of the great and mighty lord of hints.

Oh, who is he kidding anymore?

He curls in on himself and waits for it all to end, certain that it will.

He can hear it start to barrel towards him from its rapid footfalls in the dirt and just waits for the end. Fitting that his life begins just how it ends. He considers meeting Brad the start of his life, after all.

He’s ready to die, mangled in his garden. It’s not like anyone will miss him.

But when he opens his eyes to meet his maker, Brad comes to his rescue once again.

In the worst possible way.

Like a shark snapping up a fish in the water, Brad’s jaw unhinges impossibly wide and snatches the dog into his teeth, right out of the air as it’s lunging mid-air at Terry.

He’s unable to tear his eyes off the horrific sight of Brad thrashing his head around until the dog stops struggling and dies in his jaw.

Terry hates dogs. Can’t stand to be near them. When he was a boy, he was attacked by one and no one came to help him. All he could do was cry and wait for the thing to get tired of him.

But nothing, nobody, deserves to die like that.

He’s crying and panting and shaking in the dirt like he was all those years ago. He can’t even look at Brad right now, not when he’s tearing into the carcass of an animal that just didn’t know what it was walking into. Dog eating dog in a sense.

Meat. Brad eats meat.

* * *

Terry can’t look at Brad for a few days after.

He braves the cold indoors of the house at night, stays cool by keeping the windows open on hot days. He fixes the gap in the fence, then stays away from the backyard as much as he can. It feels bad, not being able to look at or sleep next to Brad at night. Things were almost good. Him and Brad, against the world. But the incident with the dog, he can’t forget. His old friends’ words echo in his mind. A monster. Doesn’t even know who he is, let alone who Terry is. It’s becoming more and more true with every passing day.

It’s like he’s alone again. Alone in Hell, drifting from place to place with nobody begging him to stay before he leaves for the next town. Being part of a team was the best and worst thing to ever happen to him.

The best because it gave him something to live for and someone that cared enough to patch him up after a fight and keep him around. Friendship. Family. Maybe something more if Brad wasn’t so focused on a goal Terry wasn’t even so sure he should be bothering with. But they were together and that was all that matters.

The worst because now that he’s used to being part of a team, the pain is deeper now that the team is disbanded.

Disbanded, except for him and his monster.

Perhaps out of love, perhaps because he just needed something to talk at again, he comes out of the house at night for the first time in a while to make a fire. Brad’s not used to it anymore and he moans at the bright light, writhing to shield his eyes from it.

Terry’s one-man-conversation for tonight is a rotten one.

“Did you even like me?” There’s a hurt in his voice that could only come from the deep loneliness he feels and has felt every day of his life, save for the tragically short time he spent not being alone. “Was I just a pawn?”

Brad moans again.

“I wouldn’t mind if I was. I just wish you told me if I was or not. I’m happy just being with you, whether you care or not.”

The fire crackles. Crickets chirp. The apocalypse never rests.

“Man, I don’t get you.”

He never will.

“Every time I thought you wanted me around...” his voice trembles wretchedly. God, he’s got to stop this shit. Brad’s not his. He never was. Yet here he is, talking like they were complicated lovers or even complicated friends.

“Lisa...Lisa...”

Terry sighs, defeated.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Who was she? A friend? A lover? Whoever she was, she’s more important to Brad than Terry ever will be. He’s selfish for wanting to be the only thing on Brad’s mind.

He rolls over on his side, away from Brad, cries for a bit, and falls asleep.

What else is there to do?

* * *

Brad’s started trying to leave again. He can’t quite break through the fence, but Terry’s seen firsthand how strong his teeth are. There were no bones left when he...had his “first meal”.

He’ll drag his mangled body over to the borders of their garden and push his body against it until the fence makes diamond-shaped cuts in his flesh, and even after that. It’s starting to bend too much against Brad’s weight for Terry’s comfort.

Out of desperation, he chains him to a stake he drives into the dirt right smack in the middle of the yard.

Brad won’t leave him. He’ll die out there.

That’s not true, but are any of the things he clings to for comfort really true?

He leaves for supplies and comes back hours later, dragging a bloody deer carcass behind him. It hurt to kill it. Took a long time to kill it, to work up the nerve and find one that would rather fight than run away. But Brad still has to eat. He’s pretty sure he does.

Terry hasn’t gotten a chance to look in a mirror in months, but can see himself in the windows of his house. Tired. Ugly as all hell. Nothing’s new.

He drags the body to the porch and tosses it into the yard as best he can (he hasn’t really gotten time to exercise lately), its blood splashing up from the slit on its neck when it falls to the dirt. He wonders if Brad can smell blood or death, because it’s not long at all before Brad’s digging into the thing and Terry has to go inside until it’s over.

But he could watch if he wanted to. He’s seen worse. Watching Brad devour his prey doesn’t sting as bad when the prey is dead.

* * *

One night, a guy sneaks into the backyard and threatens Terry to give him all his supplies.

It took this for Terry to realize he’s not as worthless in a fight as he used to be.

The guy’s dead after a while of struggling with him. Good thing he was stupid enough to not bring a gun to a robbery.

This time, Brad didn’t help. Just lied there, like he tends to do, and let Terry take the guy down himself.

It’s the first time he’s killed a real human without the help of his friends. Without Brad leading the way, telling him what to do.

Maybe that’s worth celebrating. Maybe it’s a bad thing that he can kill and not really feel. If it’s a sign that he doesn’t need Brad to back him up anymore, it’s lost on him.

A human is just a deer that’s capable of murder.

A human is just Brad’s lunch.

Terry wishes he wasn’t human.

* * *

It was bound to happen eventually.

Terry wakes up, curled up next to the now dead fire, face-to-face with not just Brad, but a heavy black boot planted firmly in the dirt. His eyes trail upwards until he recognizes who he’s looking at.

It’s Buzzo.

He jolts upright, yells at him. Buzzo’s got one fucking boot rested on Brad’s body, the other crushing a single flower in a gesture that’s all too symbolic.

“Hey!”

Buzzo pays him no mind.

Terry’s never been one to brute-force things, but he’s changed. A lot. He tries a knuckle drop to just fucking...get him off Brad, but all he does is turn back, curiously enough to enrage him further.

“What do you want?” Terry asks, his voice already raw like he’s been screaming for hours.

“You know what I want.”

Terry’s not intimidating. He knows that. Let alone to a guy like this, that’s caused them so much harm. Threatened his life. But he’s overtaken by the simple urge to at least get his dirty boot off his best friend and away from his home.

“I won’t let you.”

Buzzo finally turns to face him fully, trampling more flowers as he gets close enough to Terry to intimidate him. He’s really fucking big. Way taller than Terry, anyway.

“Terry, right? That’s your name?”

Terry hates him. Deep in his very core, he hates this man like he’s never hated another living thing before.

“I want you off my property.”

“Why are you still defending him?”

‘Because I love him’ is what he wants to say. But Buzzo doesn’t need to know that.

“Why won’t you just leave us alone?”

“I really want to know why you care so much about the fate of him.”

“I really wish you’d go away.”

Brad groans, probably only now waking up, and Terry steps between him and Buzzo before anything else happens.

“Terry, Terry, Terry...” He moves to put a hand on his shoulder, not for long as Terry violently pulls his whole body away from Buzzo’s touch. “You don’t understand how far gone your friend really is.”

But he does. He knows Brad doesn’t know who he is, or care about him. All Brad will see him as when he eventually dies out here is more food, more meat.

“I don’t care.”

“He wouldn’t do this for you.”

“He already did.” When Buzzo gave Brad the ultimatum of Terry’s life or his arm, Brad chose for Terry to live. That will never be something he can just forget.

“Not now. Not ever again.”

Terry grits his teeth and speaks through them. “He. Already. Did.”

“You’re wasting your time,” the smile on Buzzo’s face makes him sick. “A man like you, Terry, you should be with good company. You’re not like him. He was a monster before you knew him.”

In a fit of rage, Terry attempts to elbow Buzzo in the gut to get him to lay off. As expected, it doesn’t work. His abdomen doesn’t even cave a little bit.

“If you want him, you’ll have to kill me for him.”

“I’m not going to kill you. You’re not who I’m here for.”

“Then go.”

To Terry’s infinite surprise and bewilderment, Buzzo turns to leave, having hopped the fence to get in. Just like that? No fight, or a pitiful attempt at one on Terry’s end?

Terry hates how bad he wishes Buzzo would just snap his neck and end this. Hates feeling like he’s not important or at least not annoying enough to be killed. Mostly hates that he just wants it all to be over.

“I’m gonna give you some time to think on what I said.” Buzzo says, already halfway up the fence, not looking back. “Then I’ll come back for him.”

Terry swallows hard around a lump in his throat. “D-don’t bother. My mind won’t change.”

“We’ll see.”

Terry looks to the ground beneath him as Buzzo leaves. The daisies are crushed. Brad’s crying.

“See you later, Terry.” It’s a warning and a promise. He’s just playing games with him. Knows he’s got plenty of time to have what he wants.

“Blow it out your ass.”

The wasteland changes people. No doubt about that.

* * *

Life goes on as it has gone on for a while.

Terry bought a gun from a weapons vendor. He’s never fired one, not even in battle, but with Buzzo a threat again he feels like he should. He fires off rounds until he takes down a lone traveler making his way through the badlands. He gets him right in the head, too. Go him.

The man becomes Brad’s dinner that night. More men for the coming nights. It becomes almost easy. He’s not a sharpshooter, but it works.

It’s more of a chore than anything else at this point.

He loves Brad. Still does. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that the idea of Brad as he knew him is gone for good. Somehow he knows that and has known it ever since he saw him like this. Like he will always be from now on.

It’s a lot. Heavy and painful and not what he wanted when he dreamed about a life with Brad.

The man he loves is chained up in the yard.

It doesn’t hurt like it used to.

* * *

When he was a kid, a stray dog attacked him while on his way home from school.

Being a kid with nothing but fond ideas of dogs, man’s best friend, it didn’t hit him that there was something wrong until it was too late.

Its teeth sunk into his thigh, his arm, anything it could sink its teeth into, dragging him down the sidewalk like he was getting takeout. Terry takeout, that is. He’d have laughed at that if he wasn’t crying.

He called out. He’d long since learned not to call for his mom or dad, since he wouldn’t get any help from doing that. So he called out to anyone.

No one came.

Eventually, the dog just. Stopped. Let him go, went back to its business as if it just wanted a taste.

He’d limped back home that day. Inconsolable, if anyone had tried to console him. It was like everyone in the world that day had just disappeared without a trace. Leaving just him and one lone beast. He was probably meant to fight it off. That was his big moment of truth and he was supposed to become heroic, and show everyone that they were wrong for ignoring Terry Hintz!

But he failed. He ended up at the hospital a few hours after the attack.

“Has he had a rabies vaccine?” He could hear rather than see the doctor. He had his eyes closed. He just wanted to sleep for a long time.

“I don’t know.” His mom.

“That’s typically not a vaccine children receive,” the doctor again. The fact that she didn’t even know was a lot for Terry to think about. But he didn’t really want to. “We’re going to run some more tests on him. Does he take any medication?”

“Symbyax and Prozac, he’s also on a sleeping pill, I forget the name.”

Ah, she got that one. Mostly.

He got out of the hospital in a few days. To say he was never the same would imply he had some kind of standard of living, something to compare him before the attack and him after it. But there was no standard. No way to know which effects were from the dog and which were just from being Terry.

All he knew was he never wanted to be around another dog again. If no one came for him the first time, no one would come for the next.

And then that miracle happened.

Brad happened.

And Brad came to help him when the dog chased him up a tree.

And Brad did it again when Buzzo forced him to choose between Terry’s life and his own arm.

And Brad did it again, every time an enemy left him close to death.

And Brad did it again when he ate a dog whole, mid-lunge for Terry’s throat.

Someday he’s going to have to stop being saved by Brad.

Sitting guard outside every night with his shotgun tucked between his arms is a pretty good start.

* * *

Something tells him they have to leave the house.

Buzzo knows where they live. Could come any time, could take Brad from him in his sleep. But moving Brad from one place to another is a chore he only wants to have to do once.

So there they stay.

He can’t keep Brad in the yard anymore, so he makes the backdoor into the house wide enough to drag Brad inside by the chain around his neck, taking the whole door off and sawing off boards until there’s a hole in the house wide enough to accommodate his best friend.

When Brad’s inside, he works fast. New boards in place of the door, boards on top of boards, taking from the abandoned houses nextdoor until there’s planks of wood nailed on top of each other where every window and door used to be. Nothing gets in, nothing gets out.

There’s a crawlspace that leads outside for Terry to exit from when he needs supplies. Nothing else may enter.

He doesn’t bother chaining Brad to anything. He’d stopped tugging at his chains outside a while ago, content to lay there and wail and moan and cry and say a name that’s still not Terry’s.

He catches a glimpse of himself in not the windows anymore, but in the bullets for his gun. Though distorted by the shape of the bullet, he can tell how shit he looks. Ugly as ever, with some new scars from old fights, and absolutely nothing behind his own eyes. Not looking much like Terry at all.

“Hard times for the hintster, huh?” He speaks at his reflection. He hasn’t really spoken in a while. So long he can’t recognize the soft whisper of the voice he once had.

Brad’s next to him on the floor. Peaceful, just taking a nap. If he looks beyond the amorphous flesh and skin, he can see Brad. Still Brad. His best friend, who is his best friend no matter what he looks like.

He curls up on the floor with his back to the mutant. He’s never been this close during sleep before, but far be it from him to tell Brad not to bite his head off while he sleeps. Does he really even care at this point?

He’s pressed up against the sad, fleshy mass of a man. He’s warm. It’s almost like when they would share a tent, and Brad would spoon him because just because they were men didn’t mean they weren’t cold. He’ll never really know if Brad felt the same, or anything about him at all. Like he wanted it to be for more than just warmth. Like he wanted Brad to hold him close like he loved him, like the world wasn’t so horrible as long as Terry had Brad and Brad had Terry.

Ha. What a joke.

It’s the middle of the day, but he falls asleep next to Brad, as close to spooning as they’re gonna get these days.

Sleep comes easier than it has in a very long time.

* * *

“Lisa...”

Terry wakes up to moaning. It’s just how he starts the day, even though the sun hasn’t even begun to rise. He’s slept through the day.

It’s cold. Warm next to Brad but it’s fucking cold. Even boarding up all the windows and doors can’t keep the night from getting in, chilling him deep in his bones.

“Lisa...”

“Go to sleep, Brad.” This gets old fast. At first it was a miracle that Brad could form a word at all. Now it’s just annoying. He’s consumed by jealousy and resentment. This fabled girl isn’t the one taking care of him, is she? He’s never felt so bitter and ugly.

Brad groans and writhes against Terry’s back. He can feel the hot breath on the top of his head. Some nights he would wonder if Brad would rip him to pieces while he slept, and when he awoke he’d wonder why that never actually happened.

Brad takes a long time to go to sleep. Sometimes Terry’s too tired to let it prevent his own sleep, but on nights like these, the sounds, the pulsating flesh against his back, he can’t sleep through that. He can hear Brad’s heart beating underneath his skin, thumping slowly yet violently. Just moving around a bit probably works his heart to near death since he can’t imagine lumbering around like that as an easy task.

Through all of this, it’s never Brad’s heart that he wishes would just stop beating. It’s his own.

It’s another sleepless night in Olathe.

“I loved you, you know.”

There he goes again, talking at something rather than to it. The memory of Brad, maybe. When did he get so damn dramatic?

“The others told me you and the boat were gone, and I didn’t believe them even though there was no you and no boat.”

“...Lisa...”

He grips his threadbare blanket so hard he’s shaking.

“Why did you even bother bringing us along if...” his whole body is cold and trembling, though Brad’s heat is suppressive and overwhelming against his back. “You were strong enough to just gun it and do it yourself.”

A moan in response.

Terry chuckles bitterly, the only kinds of laughter he can manage nowadays. “Am I stupid?” His question lingers in the air. Neither of them are going to answer it, but Terry knows the answer. “Sometimes I think I hate you, but...” He doesn’t hate Brad. Not as a man, not as a monster.

He trails off. It’s like writing in a diary but with words. He’s scribbling over them, never the right things he wants to say. Just melodrama and feelings he doesn’t get. His fans won’t wanna read that.

What a fucking joke.

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m here with you because I don’t want to be lonely again but it’s like talking to a fucking rock.”

He whips his head violently back to look at Brad, as if accusing him of something. See if he’s retaining any of this. There’s still nothing behind those beady black eyes, just as much as there was behind them on the day they reunited.

Terry can’t look at him. He curls in on himself, holding his head with his arms in a mock attempt at cradling the very thing he seems to be losing. The tears come fast.

“I’m holding you hostage here, aren’t I?”

A beat of silence.

That name again.

“Lisa...”

A scream rips its way through Terry’s throat, pained and raw and loud. “Would you stop?! I don’t ever wanna hear that fucking name _again_!”

And Brad stops talking. He doesn’t have much to say other than that, anyway.

Terry lets his head thud to the hard floor, tears streaming down his face and snot down his nose and he must look a mess but who does he need to look good for? Buzzo when he finally comes to break his neck and take Brad away?

He lets his head rise off the ground and fall back down again. And again. Again, until it hurts to do it. He used to do it as a kid when he wanted attention, just slam his head into the walls until someone told him to stop. Wasn’t much, but it was something.

Brad isn’t much, but he’s something.

But it’s not enough. He wants Brad. The real Brad. His Brad, who was never really his at all.

“It’s pathetic, isn’t it?” His head falls one last time to the ground, and he doesn’t pick it back up. The only attention he’s getting from that these days is that of the people outside, looking for something to kill. They won’t get in, no one will ever get in again. “I’m back right where I started.”

He traces the scar on his forearm with a single finger. The doctors said they could give him a skin graft for both the one on his arm and the one on his leg, but after the initial stay at the hospital, he was never brought back to have it done. It’s ugly, they’re ugly. Everything in this world is goddamn ugly.

He’s covered in scars now. None quite like the first two, but plenty more than he had when he started following Brad. When the truck hit them, he’d walked away with a few more. For each battle, another. When he was earning them by Brad’s side, they were cool and manly. Now it’s all just ugly. A testament to time gone by, time he would never spend in that good company again.

“I just wanted to be good for you, man. I just wanted you to...make me think we were a team. But it was always just you, with me following.”

They weren’t best friends. Brad was Terry’s best friend, but Terry was never Brad’s best friend. Brad’s best friend was his goal. And only that.

The tears start again, never having truly stopped. “Why did you leave?”

Brad moans, as if trying to speak. Terry knows he’s not. He’s not going to sit there with Brad to teach him how to form words again just so he can feel like there’s still something in this world that cares about him. Besides, he already knows Brad never needed them in the first place. He has never, not once in his life, been necessary.

“Friends don’t leave friends behind.” What a childish sentiment. They’re not the fucking Goonies for christ’s sake. They’re nothing. To each other and to the world. If only that were true on Terry’s part.

Despite it all, Brad is everything to him.

“I didn’t believe them when they said the boat was gone. I wanted to wait there until you came back because I thought you’d be back, expecting to see me there. I wanted to wait forever.”

He’d yelled at Shocklord and Birdie. Yelled at his friends that they were selfish for thinking Brad would leave them behind. He’d waited by the water for hours until the reality sank in and his tears fell right into the ocean Brad had sailed away from them on. The others were good comfort. But his heart had been shattered. His wounding loneliness resurfaced. If they’d just let him, he would’ve pushed off and dove right into that ocean, and would either swim or sink depending on what his heart wanted.

He would’ve sank for sure.

”And I was okay with leaving _them_ behind for you, isn’t that something?” He laughs like it’s a joke but it’s the most painful realization he could come to. “I thought you were all I needed. Could be you and me, like in the beginning, but all I did was get rid of the only two people that still wanted to be my friend.”

He can’t go crying back to them. He imagines Shocklord nursing his bite wound by a fire and regretting ever meeting Brad or Terry. He feels bad that he and Birdie had to meet them, too.

“Isn’t it fucked up that I don’t know who I even am anymore without you?”

Terry doesn’t know who he is anymore period.

After a while he just stops talking. The tears still flow freely down his cheeks but words fail him. Talking to things that can’t listen may have worked for him before, but now that he’s found and lost a real friend, it pales in comparison.

He wonders what the cost of taking joy would be.

Obviously he knows. The cost of taking joy is right beside him. But would it be so awful to be a mutant? Maybe being reverted to his most simplest state would be the one cure to this pain. And maybe Brad would be able to understand him, and he’d understand Brad. Their moans in pain would no longer be a foreign language. They could be disgusting wastes of air, but they’d be together. Terry doesn’t feel together with Brad in this state.

No, he can’t. Won’t. He’s too fucking scared.

Brad wouldn’t want him to.

“I love you.” He whimpers out through the tears. It’s all he can say, a confession that couldn’t come when it actually mattered. “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He can hear Brad shuffle closer. Too close, like he might crush Terry if he rolls over even a little. This must be it. He must be hungry. If it’s his time, it’s his time.

Perhaps there’s no better or worse way to go than being devoured by the love of your life.

He can even feel drool drip down onto his head and neck. He hopes it at least will happen quickly.

“I love you, Brad.”

He closes his eyes and waits.

The first thing he feels is Brad’s tongue, still pretty normal in size for how big he’s become. It licks a stripe along the back of his head and he shivers violently.

It’s coming. It’s over. He’s sorry for not being able to protect him after this.

But...

It never happens.

He waits. And waits. And waits for the pain to start, the agonizing feeling of being ripped to pieces and finally leaving this pitiful life behind.

But Brad is...just licking him.

He chances a look back, and Brad doesn’t stop even when they’re face to face. He’s crying. Brad does that a lot but...why now?

Matching Terry’s sorrow. Solemnly going about this like it’s just a normal thing to do.

Brad is...grooming him.

That can’t be right, but there’s no foul intent in his motions or in his eyes. In fact, his eyes are showing more emotion than he’s ever seen.

He doesn’t know what to say. What is there to be said? It feels horrid but it’s the most calming, loving gesture he’s ever experienced.

The tears start anew. He doesn’t understand this. He doesn’t understand Brad. But in a sad, strange way, he gets it.

Things cannot be like this forever. He knows that one day something is going to change. Brad will be taken away, or leave himself somehow. Terry will die off in some typical way, murder or starvation or something. Perhaps Brad will be the first to go, his monstrous body no longer able to support life.

But for now, there is life behind Brad Armstrong’s eyes. There’s life inside Brad Armstrong. And maybe a small part of it, at the very least doesn’t want Terry to be sad.

Maybe an even smaller part loves him back.

Terry’s inconsolable, though Brad seems to be trying to. He caresses what’s left of Brad’s face and holds onto it like it’s the only thing he has left, and it is.

This isn’t a good situation. There’s nothing that can fix this. At some point in time, they will both die. And Brad is not his, not in the way he wants. But it’s okay.

At least, for a brief moment in time, they got to live at the same time as each other.

There is still beauty left in the wasteland. Beauty in good company.

**Author's Note:**

> Couple notes  
-this is my first Lisa fic, I haven’t finished playing Joyful but I’ve watched the first and finished playing Painful  
-i realize buzzo probably would not just leave brad to teach terry some kind of lesson but really. Who cares  
-my very loose backstory for Terry is just that he had neglectful parents and has had major depressive disorder ever since he was a child, still has it in canon timeline  
-i adore Terry but i had to channel the pain of playing through the lisa games somehow  
-please play lisa  
-comments are extremely appreciated. I know this fandom’s pretty much dead but fuck it. Im pretty proud of this one


End file.
